“If anything has happened to her,” said Tuttle, turning the iron over in his hand.
“She’s okay. She had problem with a thief,” said the Colonel, the chilling smile on this face. “He was drunk. He broke into your house. She’s not hurt. No problem.”
The Colonel extended the mobile phone to Tuttle, who hesitated; the Colonel’s two goons struggled to their feet. This was the kind of trouble he had preached for years to avoid. Never cause a Thai to lose face; never show anger, and never, never raise a fist. Because they will always win, and they will kill you. Tuttle had gone over the top of what was sensible and prudent, and he knew from the expressions on their faces they wanted to kill him. The driver, a smear of blood over his mouth, reached for his gun, but the Colonel waved him off with a nod.
The Colonel, his golf shoes clicking on the concrete, turned back to Tuttle. “I underestimated your skill with a golf club, Khun Tuttle.” He paused and swallowed hard. “You have assaulted two Thai police officers. That is very serious. Remember, finesse wins the game.”
Tuttle had not only lost his temper. Through his use of force, he allowed the Colonel a victory; a moral hole-in-one with a golf club owned by the Colonel. Tuttle was angry with himself. He watched the driver and Lek return to the BMW, slamming the car doors. The car reversed out of the parking lot at high speed, raising a cloud of dust. Tuttle watched the BMW disappear. He should have foreseen the set-up, he thought. Watching the Colonel, Tuttle slowly brought the phone to his ear.
Asanee sobbed, choking on her words. “Daddy, he had a knife. They shot him. Daddy, I am scared. He’s dead in downstairs.” Her voice sounded tiny, remote.
“Where are you now? ”
“Home,” she whispered.
“I’m on the way. Stay calm, I’m on Soi 18 with Colonel Chao. Everything is okay, sweetheart. It’s over. We’ll be okay. Promise,” said Tuttle, passing the phone back to the Colonel. A sense of relief flooded over him. He looked out over the driving range. The sun split through the advertisement signs, slanting the light at right angles across the vast expanse of grass and the thousands of golf balls like shiny white unexploded bombs scattered across a vast expanse of lawn.
“You knew the man your men killed at my house? ” It was the kind of question Tuttle felt he already knew the answer to. He wanted to make the Colonel blow just one shot.
“He was a petty criminal,” said the Colonel. “A thug. Someone no one will miss.” He hit a perfect nine iron shot.
“Executed.” Tuttle pronounced each syllable slowly as the photo of the famous cold-blooded Saigon street execution flashed through his mind. The Saigon police chief, a routine expression of this-is-just-another-job, squeezing a round off into the head of a civilian in the street. The Vietnamese war photo hung above the piano at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. This image of death reminded every journalist that the war had never been about ideology, but over who selected the people who held the gun and pulled the trigger. This image from the street execution played back in Tuttle’s mind as he visualized one of the colonel’s men killing the guy who had been sent in to terrorize his daughter. That was how power was exercised in Southeast Asia. The executioners knew no fear. Why should they? Who could protect him or Asanee? The American government? That was a joke, thought Tuttle. The Saigon police chief had gone on to run a string of liquor stores in Southern California.
“My guess is your men executed him,” said Tuttle.
“He was shot resisting arrest. My men execute orders, not people.”
Tuttle nodded, looking at the Colonel for a long ten count. “Resisting is dangerous,” said Tuttle.
“Sometimes fatal.”
Tuttle, his mind shifting to Asanee, dropped the bent iron on the concrete walkway. “Let me know the name of the bank and the number of the account,” he said. The colonel’s caddie caught the dropped iron on the first bounce.
The colonel was right about one thing, thought Tuttle. He had found something in the Vietnam war. Peace or war, Indochina was constructed on influence, money, family; a canvas of private spheres of power, an elite imprinted into the fabric of history. Men like the Colonel were both immune and dispensable. They served a larger purpose and as long as they created benefits, they remained immune; as soon as they caused detriment, they were dispensable. The Colonel, at the moment, and that was the only frame of time that counted, lived beyond the law. Such men were capable of crossing any boundary, sanctioning any crime, could confiscate any property and then withdraw deep into the secret underground bunker of their class and culture.
* * *
SARAH had once written in her dairy about Tuttle’s smile on her wedding day. If only she had lived to witness the Colonel smiling against the backdrop of the driving range, thought Tuttle. If only she could have seen the fluid way he swung a golf club, sending a golf ball skyward, his spiked shoes dancing on the smooth, gray concrete surface. If only she had known in Los Angeles, before she decided to die, the way money circulated in Indochina; not in the direction of idealism—or not for long, because the world was a far more deadly place for the living than the dead. Tuttle thought back to the day of her wedding to Lawrence. He saw himself in the back of the church. He saw in that image something he had missed before; the reflection of his own smile on the Colonel’s face; that kind of knowing smile worn like a garment, and cut from the same cloth in every language—a smile announcing its authority and issuing a demand for an unconditional surrender.
“It’s up to you,” said the Colonel.
Tuttle walked out of the bay. “Yeah, it’s up to me,” he said. He started to walk away, then, stopped himself. He turned and faced the Colonel. “You know what we found in the war? ” asked Tuttle.
“What, Khun Tuttle? ”
“Never keep your money in a country when you can hide it in a Swiss bank. Never keep score unless you intend to win. Never call a colonel your golf buddy unless you’re prepared to play his game. And never promise a girl on the game or drug addict what you can’t deliver,” said Tuttle.
“What can’t you deliver, Khun Tuttle? ”
“That I could save her. That I could protect her against herself.” Such promises were fraught with difficulties. He swallowed hard, thinking of Sarah, of Asanee, and of all the faces from HQ he could never remember.
He walked through the gravel parking lot, passed the shed housing the caddies waiting to be chosen. Everywhere on the horizon were construction cranes like artillery batteries targeting an empty sky. He thought about those who were builders and those who made the rules of the game. It was their world, their private country club, and like every other porter on the soi, Tuttle was simply grateful he had made it through the minefields with his daughter and survived another day.
Christopher G. Moore is a Canadian writer who once taught law at the University of British Columbia. After his first book His Lordship’s Arsenal was published in New York to a critical acclaim in 1985, Moore became a full-time writer and has so far written 19 novels and one collection of interlocked short stories.
Moore is best known by his international award-winning Vincent Calvino Private Eye series and his cult classics Land of Smiles Trilogy, a behind-the-smiles study of his adopted country, Thailand. His novels have been translated into eleven languages. His Vincent Calvino novels are published in the United States by Atlantic Monthly Press and in Great Britain and the Commonwealth by Atlantic Books.
He lives with his wife in Bangkok. For more information about the author and his work, visit his official website: www.cgmoore.com. He also blogs regularly with other cirme authors at www.internationalcirmaothors.com.
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A Killing Smile Page 33